Written by Mark MacNamara. Originally: "Dialog With Stone," a traveler's digression begun in 2004, with entries From Africa, Europe and North America. Now: a ramble-jam through the countryside of American culture, high and low, real and imagined.

Feb 18, 2008

Woman Sitting In A Chair

I heard this from one of the parents at the school. Naturally, you're thinking, ‘was this one of those Steinerian hystericals telling how someone's birkenstocking got ripped, or else a finger-knitting went awry in the middle of winter.'

Actually, this same person once assured me that everything in the Spear of Destiny was absolute fact. Which is nonsense. What Trevor Ravenscroft wrote in that book was largely make-up, particularly the business about Rudolf Steiner coming up with a potion to rid a wealthy Bavarian landowner of rabbits, not to mention the story about the psychic battles he fought with the intelligencia of the Third Reich. It’s all cult memorabilia mixed with urban myths. Chatchkas from Lourdes.

On the other hand, Steiner did believe he was the reincarnation of Aristotle. And he did sell indulgences as it were, famous reincarnations, to wealthy Anthroposophists. He needed the money to rebuild the Goteneum after it burned down. You'll remember what an architectural triumph that was.

Anyway, this story I was told was about a man who recently suffered a stroke. There's been a lot of that lately. A man in our own school had the same thing happen to him. When you hear this, immediately you think of the character in The Diving Bell and The Butterfly, although the man I'm talking about can see, can talk, albeit with a slur, and he can almost sit up. He can also move his right arm a little.

He used to be quite a boulevardier; grew up in New York City, became an antique dealer, then a race car driver, bought a vineyard in Italy, married three or four times, and finally settled here and into landscape architecture and painting. He loves parties and women of all ages and gets a squeeze whenever he can. On certain holidays, and not just Halloween he dresses up as a pirate or a matinee idol. He used to come as Errol Flynn but nobody knew who that was. He also used to drink a lot and would make terrible fun of his wife.

Incidentally, his wife is a doctor at California Pacific. Harvard Medical School, very cold, according to my friend, no charm, but extremely bright and sexy in her aloofness. She's always talking about the latest therapies and can quote all the statistics related to your illness, and your chances of survival.

So the story is that a friend of theirs, someone who often comes to their house for dinner, visits this man once a week, usually on Saturday afternoons and strips for him. Partly as entertainment and partly to speed up his recovery. The wife believes the neurons fire faster with some sensual stimulation, but not from her.

The good samaritan is a former jazz dancer, in her mid 40s, very in her prime, luxurious long black hair, great figure. She arrives, but the wife, the doctor, is not there. The samaritan doesn't speak. Literally, never says a word. She comes in, and believe me he waits for this all week, she turns away from him, takes off her dress, sits on a chair, a simple wooden chair, with her back to him, and then reaches behind and takes off her bra. Sometimes, he asks her to do it more than once. Then she takes down her hair and sometimes she'll turn to one side to show just the curve of her breast.

What really drives him crazy is when, after moving around for a long time, and you understand this is all subtle, this isn't pole dancing, it's more the way a painter's model might move to find a comfortable position; what drives him over the edge is when she turns the chair a little to one side, so she's more in profile, and then leans forward and spills her long hair over the chair. This is his erotic button and the heart of it is the way she exposes her neck, a very beautiful long neck. There's something about the vulnerability in that he finds spellbinding.

This teasing goes on for about an hour. Sometimes, his wife has left on some music. Jazz, New Music. Sometimes, the patient moves his good arm, as though trying to paint her. Sometimes, he begs her to show more, to do more, but she doesn't and that, according to his wife is what makes the healing go faster. The wanting is the magic potion.

This lasts an hour or so and then the woman gets dressed but doesn't face him, gets her purse and leaves. My friend tells me that this therapy has done the man wonders. I'm also told that at least once the wife, the doctor, watched the whole thing from out in the hallway.